Crafting an ENTIRE fantasy village for $0 - Beginner friendly Builds! 

We have made a brand new fantasy Universe with 10 amazing looking miniatures to paint! You can check out the campaign and support the channel - it goes live October 2022 here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/squidmar/champions-of-sona-75mm-resin-miniatures

3:30 fact, if you are hobbying on a budget one of the best things you can do is just ask. I wanted to get a friend into killteam, but I literally couldn't afford to buy a box of models for him. So I just went to my local games store, asked one of the clerks I was friends with if she had some used models I could buy for cheap. And she just gave me five space marines they usually give out to kids who want to try painting for free. Another time I needed 7 boxes of card sleeves for Magic the Gathering. Went down to the same store and told the clerk I'd rather spend my money here, but the sleeves just a bit cheaper than what they costed at the store or I'd have to go online. And the guy said it wasn't a problem, and I got the at a cheaper price. Don't be afraid to ask, most people who are into these niche hobbies are willing to help you if you are on a budget. Having some basic people skills can go a long way if you don't have the money right now.

I love these "using only materials I have around the house" because it always includes things that almost no one has around the house. Great video though, I didn't actually expect to be able to do this for free

For the shingles if you mist with water then use a hair dryer to heat it up then it will curl in some places giving a realistic worn roof look. 👌

1st, INCREDIBLE BUILD! 2nd - So, I used to be a roofer. Copper was and is used only in sheets, not shingles. Typically it is used because it is pliable when cold. Not only that, but it costs A FORTUNE. Only government buildings and cathedrals have copper. Thatch and wood shingles were and are used almost exclusively for most buildings. Just thought the concept of copper roofs is an interesting one that I am going to use! Making sheets of copper would be EXTREMELY easy

I love builds like this. Scratchbuilding can appear quite scary, so it's always good to see that actually, it doesn't have to be.

Underrated bit but I love the subtle chainsaw sound clip for the hand saw at 8:53 😅 Keep up the great work!

Not exactly $0, lol. That being said it's lovely to see some scratch built terrain like this pop up on my feed since I'm leaning that direction right now. Thanks Squidmar for doing cool stuff.

I've uploaded the templates i made over on my website - downloadable for free: squidmar.com/fantasyhouses They might not be the best but they did the trick!

Hi Squidmar, awesome video again. Here is a little realistic tip. Copper prevents moss from growing. In Switzerland we have this traditionnal roofing technique called tavillon, which is basically wooden tiles. You can get moss on it. But if the chimney is in copper, or the base of it which is usual, or if the ridgecap is in copper, you'll have much less moss. On some chalet you even have roofs full of moss, except just under the chimney due to rain water touching the copper, getting "copperised" and by flowing of the roof under it prevents the moss from growing.

I still have my "How to Build Wargames Terrain" 😎 and I actually just built a little hut with similar techniques, it's so much fun to just be free and creative with non-expensive materials!

More of this please! I very fondly remember the times when GW included these Hobbyist Chapters even in the Rulebooks. It's a shame that they scrapped those ideas completely. I would love to see a 40k terrain vid too!

Another detail that might be cool to add to some, would be baking paper with some lines drawn on to simulate old school mica windows! And then if you had some of those LED candles you could pop them in to add a nice glow. Just something to play with. :)

"Fantasy Land Time" is one of my favorite periods from antiquity

Awesome! Love this kind of content, not enough youtube hobby content aimed at kids with no budget (like we all used to be), and definitely not enough scratch built terrain content! One little tweak though is maybe next time not to use any tools a kid wouldn't have access to like the dremel, and maybe no xps foam too as that's quite expensive to buy as well. Thanks for making this, I hope you can do more in the future.

Now we just need a collaboration between Eric's Hobby Workshop, Black Magic Crafts, and Squidmar for a complete 90's fantasy village!

One of my favourite episodes so far! I love the fact that you show us (brilliantly) that there is no need to spend huge amounts of money to make gorgeous things! Please, make more episodes like this one!

When ever I’m feeling burnt out I just watch a few of these videos to get pumped back up and ready to go again, thanks for being an inspiration and an absolute chad 😎

This is one of my favorite videos you've done in a while, thank you

This is not $0 lol

🖌 If you want to try out the Squidmar Brushes go here: www.squidmar.com/latepledge

Another alternative for a roof is to use cardboard but peel of one side so you expose the wavy middle bit. It can look great like a tile roof. A thatch roof is also possible but is majorly time intensive, Just glue down the tips of twine string, and the unravel. It can take awhile, but the effect is masterful.

Can't go wrong with a retro 90's village! 😄

Steel wire, Mr. Squidmar. A steel wool pad or wire grill brush makes a great tool to scrub coffee stirrers with in order to give them a natural-looking grain similar to a life-sized plank. You can also leave some steel wool in water (or use a teabag instead of steel wool for a browner effect) then brush that into the bare wood to make a deep-reaching dye/stain. Excellent for making really old buildings or ruins with wood elements.

In English, the white part of the timber buildings (the areas referred to as "plaster or putty") is "daub." It's the goopy material applied to the wicker-like "wattle" of "wattle and daub" fame. Great video! I have that old How to Make Wargames Scenery book too and I have made plenty of building myself in this classic style. I love it!

Don’t forget to build the mandatory outdoor toilette/shack that was in one of the starter set for Warhammer! Nice terrain that brings my back to the golden age of wargamming, the real warhammer! 😀

I pressed the like button as soon as I saw the cereal box! Long live the makers! Long live the DIY!

Great video! Nice to see the "retro-build scenery" - love it! Keep up the great work!

Probably the pieces with the best cost/benefit I've seen in a decade into the hobby! Of course you guys are professional etc, but a noob can also get some nice results with your tips. Thanks!

I love this sorta stuff, building a kit is great and they look nice but making something new from scratch is fun and you can make things that are personal to yourself, we have a very old thatched building in my village called "the revolution house" that was part of a plot to overthrow a king many years ago, I plan to build a recreation of it soon :)

Great Video. Absolutely pure gold. I love it!!! This is exactly what i want to do, create everything myself from home made items and this is such an inspirational video. Thankyou - from someone who just started Warhammer collecting last month. Your advice is much appreciated and I am going to follow you guys all the time now.

Absolutely more of these, please! IN a day and age where everyone shows off the possibilities of resin prints (and yes, that stuff is awesome, but expensive, the resin is shall we say often problematic, also ecologically, and programming is an art form), we need more DIY videos! Now one for Mordheim ruins, please.... :-) All the best to you, Emil, and keep up the great work! Thanks so much!

Love it. It's great to see hobbyist continue this type of crafting despite it losing all support from GW.

It's amazing what you can make with some simple supplies, a whole bunch of time and some skill. Beautiful work :D

That roof technique is genius! Also the little plants and moss tufts really take these builds to the next level. Great video!

Squidmar im so glad I found your channel. You're a gem to me with your crafting and painting tips! Thanks for what you do!

Boy. I did this stuff back in 3rd Edition WHFB. Made a big Mordheim/Fantasy table. Some of it survives today in my Frostgrave terrain.

danggggg these all look great! very cool 🙂

Loved this video! This got me feeling fired up to build a little cottage or inn!!! 🥰

I donated my collection of LotR magazines to the kids crafting workshops for this exact reason, the guides GW used to give were amazing.

10:40 - it seems unlikely that those overlapped offset card tiles would be copper or metal, they'd more likely be slate, stone, clay or wood. It's very expensive to cover a building in metal roofing, so it's saved for expensive solid stone buildings and would require an excess of metal (I.e. your kingdom/fantasy world can't be at war when the building was built, otherwise the metal would go towards armour and weapons production and it would also have to be important enough not to have been stripped of metal when the war started). And when you do install metal roofing, as you can see in your example pictures, you use a crimping technique that means there are ridges all the way down in straight lines. The offset you see on roof tiles is caused by the nails that hold the tiles in place being covered by the tile above it. Of course your fantasy world can have this unusual combination of materials, but it's much more likely that they wouldn't have this kind of roofing and it's also way easier to do slate, clay or wood tiles with a base paint, a watery brown wash and a dry brush of a cream/off white. But YOLO!

Love how he discovered how real shingles worked by trying to be efficient with modelling

I love the look of these kinds of buildings. I've built loads of these using foam card over the years. With a little bit of practice you can make great terrain for very little money- fantastic to shine a light on it particularly for younger gamers who might have missed the scratch build era

I love that you used beach sand! I would have never thought of that!

Imagine if they printed sprues in a way you could click them together after to make the frames of a building, then add whatever cardboard finish you wanted over the top. So much plastic could be saved.

I loved my homemade wargaming terrain. Those old books were awesome and a good example of the direction GW has gone in. Great video!

Love this. You just keep adding to the long list of stuff I want to build.

This was so cool. Love cheap recyclable material videos like this!

Zero dollars. That kinda went off the rails once the dirt down came out. But damn does it ever seem to work well. The plants too. very nice.

Awesome instructional. Couple of safety points for the younger folks who may want to try this out that Emil probably meant to mention are: never use sharp knives without adult supervision or assistance, even if you are an adult it is a good idea to have someone else around because we can make mistakes, too; NEVER use plastic or super glue on styrofoam as it creates dangerous toxic fumes (although there are some uses for such techniques for older builders when using a well ventilated area and a respirator), use PVA or hot glue and make sure you seal the styrofoam like Emil did with a PVA-paint mixture; always wear a mask, as you saw Emil doing in this video because he is awesome, and you do not want to aspirate small particles of sand, wood fibre or styrofoam (bad for the lungs). I loved this video. I plan to try out your templates for these buildings because I am a miniature terrain builder of many years and was often the go to guy for the table terrain when I worked as a sales associate for GW at a number of retail stores in my country. As a matter of fact my terrain builds became prizes for some customers such as: a custom Gut Barger Stadium to celebrate the release of the Ogre Kingdoms and give customers a place in the store to test out the Gut Barging Rules from White Dwarf Magazine (can't remember the issue number but look at issues from late 2004 to early 2005). The Stadium had an attached Runt Punting Field for those fans of the Gut Barge who wanted to vent their frustrations after their favourite Ogre was ousted from competition. Couple of tips: for the roof tiles (exactly the method I use) you can make things go faster using dollar store paper edging scissors such as those made by Friskars, that will give you notched edge which can be left looking clean and evenly made or you can use a pair of scissors or hobby knife to mess up the notches a bit after to make it look more random and rough; and for cutting the medium density or high density foam insulation (pink and blue), rather than using a saw as demonstrated, score the line you want fairly deep with a box cutter or large hobby knife then just give the cut off a gentle knock with your fist and it should break off almost perfectly (avoids all that foam particulate going everywhere which is impossible to clean up) and NEVER use a saw on foam bead insulation because the mess will be enormous (foam bead insulation can be picked apart for a nice stone texture look for building bases or even walls and other terrain features); last, remember that ALL of the materials Emil used here can be sanded, including card stock! For texture, you can actually mix PVA, paint, and sand or whatever together and apply it with a hobby brush (not one you use for miniature painting) or a piece of sponge to stipple it on rather than painting the PVA on and then adding sand. The look that Emil was describing for the buildings was called "waddle and daub" which was a mixture similar to plaster made with sand and clay and then white washed all held up on thin slats of wood that were put in between the building framework, look it up. Sorry, Emil, I should probably do my own video, but I love yours so much I just got carried away here. Maybe I will do my own and just credit you heavily for the inspiration. Keep up the amazing content my Swedish friend. Much love and appreciation from Canada.

Quality content! Love the build and painting style!

You are brilliant. Making so much with so little to start! Awesome!

Thank you for making the templates free to download- I am just getting into miniature scale sets after getting the hang of dioramas. It can be expensive, so these small 'hacks' go a long way for someone like me just getting into it and not wanting to break bank.

ah yes ive just spent 0$ on my materials for my build. all I need now is some expensive paint, power tools, and painting lessons so I don't waste my materials.

Never ceases to amaze me how talented you guys are! Hope to get to your level one day!

Nice looking terrain and props to you for including footage where you wear proper protection while working with the Dremel 👍

How to build a village for 0 dollars, easy, just use the leftovers from when you built that village for not 0 dollars

Not really $0 but a cool build and way cheaper than pre-made. Making custom terrain and kitbashing is what brought me to war gaming. A dying art unfortunately. Most people want instant boards or somebody else to do all the work.

I was literally just building a small building yesterday. It didn't turn out quite as nice as yours but it's a good first attempt. And I learned a lot from it. Your video has given me some ideas how to push it a little further. Funny how that worked out. You making terrain video and I building one as well. Thanks for the video.

Would love to see some more of these budget guides/challenges. This was awesome!

"Crafting an ENTIRE fantasy village for $0" so here is about $100 worth of materials left over from roughly $600 worth past purchases, using roughly $200 worth of professional tools and equipment and about $100 worth of high quality paints and finishes.

Cant believe your videos always contain so much informative content !!! Enjoy your videos - nuff said!

Something extra fun about watching terrain being built. Like that you did it on the cheap as well.

absolutely gorgeous!! Nicely done friend

This is awesome and makes me feel like its so much more accessible than I thought

This video was amazing it will help me so much with my personal projects I hope you make more videos like this one

Those turned out so well! Great job!

VERY IMPRESSIVE! This looks amazing and simple.

Great video. Thank you so much for making this. Very helpful for my dungeons and dragons campign.

this is so relaxing to watch and partake in. I love this hobby

Blood bath at Ork's drift. Brilliant name.

I loved this video. Thank you for helping remind us how easy it can be.

Love This great old return to form! Great content recently 👏

Awesome video 👌 really good end results and clear instructions on the process!

The result looks like so much better than I expeted. You guys are obviously very skilled.

Absolutely fantastic work. I actually think this is one of your best ever.

This was one of your best videos and I would love to see a follow up and the templates shared!

My pick for favorite old school terrain is the cardboard buildings and rubble for mordheim, many good memories of finding new ways to set up unique maps

Awesome builds. Nice video. Keep up the good work.

lovely little start to a village!

Videos like this are so needed in the gaming community, please make more! :)

It’s amazing!! So creative! Congratulations I will definitely make some scenery this eay

I am 100% doing this! I think I'll roof the houses with shakes though since the stir sticks really work well for those. Dope video and thanks for the templates!

it looks amazing! you did a great job!!

Amazing work and I really enjoyed the video cheers squidmar ✊🏻

This was incredible ❤

These are amazing!

Painting the paper for the wanted posters with old Coffee and letting them dry gives them the weathered parchment look!

That was amazing and really inspiring!

Wow, those buildings turned out very nice. I remember when I first started building terrain for miniature wargaming that I used some paper/cardboard templates from D&D. Wizards of the coast published them for free along with instructions how to build them on their website and I was still able to find them on some archive/mirror site a couple of years ago.

You have so many great videos, but this is one of your best ever. Well done.

I am speechless how good this turned out. And can't wait to try it myself :)

looks so good! gotta try it sometime.

These look amazing! Might give this a try sometime if I have the time

I really enjoyed this thank you. it just shows you don't need all expensive equipment to do this sort of a hobby.much appreciate this it has given me lots of ideas Thanks again Keep up the good work

great video super simple and the terrain looks awesome 😁

Yo this is so dope! Love your content and mad skillz

They look great! Very realistic.

Stucco! Stucco, is the word you were looking for! Beautiful build!

This is super cool!